Birthday quandries

Andrew's birthday is coming up.  He is going to be 9.  NINE.  And as my "helpful" friend Pamela pointed out, that is the halfway point to adulthood.  Now that's all I can think about.  I'm halfway done with him being MINE.  Realistically less...since what 16 year old boy wants to belong to his mother.  :)

Anyway, we're back to the problem of what to get Andrew for his birthday.

Problems:

1)  He is a 9 year old boy who doesn't like to build with Legos or make gross stuff in an experiment kit.  Those are pretty much your options in the toy store for a 9 year old boy.

2)  Andrew doesn't really play with toys anymore.  He'll play while his brother and sister play...but just for a minute or two.  Action figures, model cars, etc., are really a thing of the past for him.

3) His birthday is basically in the winter, so getting him outdoor sports things is a mean mean tease of a gift.

4) He doesn't enjoy crafty/artsy things very much.  Occasionally he will sit down and paint/sketch/craft...but it is mostly a struggle to make him do these things.  He gets that gene quite strongly from me.

5)  He loves computer/video games, but I feel like he already has so many with so little time to actually play them.

6) He would love to get an iPad or an iPod touch...but come on.  Have we met?


Andrew is everything I want a kid to be...he isn't materialistic or needy, he doesn't want for much.  He is content with what he has.  He almost never asks for "stuff".  In fact, he much more frequently will out of the blue say, "Mom?  I really like our life.  We are really lucky."  Which is GRAND...except for 2 times a year when I wish he would be a little more greedy so I could get ideas for birthday and Christmas.

So.  What to get him.  Last Christmas when faced with this quandary, I ended up getting him a tadpole kit.  Which was a HUGE HIT.  And he did a really good job taking care of it.   I just hated going to the pet store each week to get live crickets...and then keeping the crickets alive in a separate cage with separate food.  Ugh.  I wish there was some "Future Actuarial" kit filled with graph paper and charts and books filled with statistics.  He would LOVE that.

***I realize that I paint a picture here of Andrew that makes him seem like a pocket-protector using nerdlinger.  He really is quite well socialized...and will play with whatever other kids are playing with when he is with them.  But when he is on his own...he just doesn't have much that he likes to do.  I mean, right now, he is going through a book of the presidents and making a chart of when their birthdays are.  He wanted to know which month had the most.  He thought of this all on his own.  Okay...maybe he IS a nerdlinger.